As the new semester ramps up, we thought it was a good time to remind you about the wealth of digital images available on ARTstor. New content and features are always being added. Here are a few highlights.

Millions of images

ARTstor is a digital library of images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences. These include campus-built collections (UC Shared Images), as well as several licensed resources and the ARTstor core collection. Together they amount to more than 1.75 million images—a number that continues to grow with the ongoing addition of new collections spanning a range of topics and eras.

Just some of the subjects include: African-American Studies, Anthropology, Architecture, Asian Studies, Foreign Languages and Literature, Middle Eastern Studies, Music History, Native American Studies, and Women’s Studies. ARTstor’s Collections by Topic page lists all of these subjects and more, with detailed help guides for finding images in each area.

New Functionality and Training Materials

ARTstor’s simple interface and advanced tools enable UC faculty and students to search across collections, as well as view, present, and manage the images that interest them.

Teaching with ARTstor is now even easier, thanks to a new export feature. Instructor-level users can batch-export images—and their metadata—to Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 in just a few clicks. Faculty can quickly assemble class presentations, without cutting and pasting or retyping image information. The Visual Resources Collection at UC Berkeley has created a short instructional video demonstrating the batch export.

Additionally, ARTstor offers online training sessions to familiarize new users and help returning users sharpen their skills. “Introduction to ARTstor” provides an overview for all users, while “Presenting with ARTstor” and “Teaching with ARTstor” are designed especially for faculty and graduate student instructors. The sessions are free of charge to members of all institutions that subscribe to ARTstor. See the winter 2010 schedule for a list of upcoming trainings.

The CDL has transitioned the access of several image collections from CDL’s version of the Luna Insight service to other entry points. This decision is a result of a recent analysis of access systems and a budget review.

Most of the image collections will now be accessed through Luna Commons (http://www.lunacommons.org/), a publicly accessible web-based interface. Luna Commons provides an intuitive and much better user experience than the older version of Insight (both browser and client views) currently running at CDL, and it does not require a client software download to access images. For the few collections that are not available in Luna Commons, we will be pointing to them in more current versions of Luna Insight hosted by other institutions, accessible directly through a web browser.

In the short term, we will maintain the CDL Luna Insight service for access to one resource: the National Palace Museum of Taipei image collection. In the case of this particular collection, the image viewing resolution and download size is lower in Luna Commons than it is in Luna Insight. We will be researching alternate access options for this collection in the future.

What do you need to do?

Since the resource PIDs (persistent identifiers) stay the same even when URLs change, you will not need to make any changes to links—provided you are using the PID. However, if you linked directly to any collections through CDL’s version of Luna Insight, you will need to change those links to the PIDs listed below. Likewise, if you are linking to any other webpage that is an entry point to one of these collections, we recommend you transition to using the PID at this time to ensure persistent access through the best interface available.

We will continue to update and maintain the www.imageservice.cdlib.org page, which also provides a list of available image collections and their PIDs.

]]>UC Berkeley contributes 28,000 architecture images to UC Shared Imageshttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2009/09/23/uc-berkeley-contributes-28000-architecture-images-to-uc-shared-images/
Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:05:45 +0000http://cdlib-dev.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=1323The Visual Resources Center at the College of Environmental Design (CED) at UC Berkeley has added more than 28,000 images to the UC Shared Images collections. The images, which represent a third of the Center’s entire digital collection, document the built environment from the pre-historical period to the early 21st century. ]]>By Sherri Berger, Program Coordinator for Digital Special Collections

The Visual Resources Center at the College of Environmental Design (CED) at UC Berkeley has added more than 28,000 images to the UC Shared Images collections. The images, which represent a third of the Center’s entire digital collection, document the built environment from the pre-historical period to the early 21st century. Comprising photographs, site plans, floor plans, elevations, and more, they provide a comprehensive record of the world’s architectural history.

The collection is particularly strong in the work of architect Le Corbusier, 20th-century Japan, European Modernism, and late-20th-century Northern California — including many original materials from the CED Archives — all of which are not typically covered in such breadth in standard resource collections. Another highlight is Egyptian and Middle Eastern architecture, where in some cases the images depict structures that no longer exist or are physically inaccessible.

CED VRC Director Jason Miller calls this addition to UC Shared Images “a tremendous shot in the arm to UC’s architecture resources.” The upload complements several thousand architecture images already available through UC Shared Images, including the recent acquisition by CDL of the Archivision Digital Research Library.

The new images are made available through ARTstor. Click on “UCB: Visual Resources Collection” in the Institutional Collections section to see all images from UC Berkeley.

UC Shared Images is a collaborative, cross-campus program for building an aggregated image collection across the UC system. To learn more about operations and current activities, visit the program wiki.

]]>Irvine Adds to UC Shared Images in ARTstorhttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2009/05/06/irvine-adds-to-uc-shared-images-in-artstor/
Wed, 06 May 2009 18:49:37 +0000http://cdlinfo.cdlib.org/blog/2009/05/06/irvine-adds-to-uc-shared-images-in-artstor/UC Shared Images in ARTstor continue to grow with the addition of over 600 images from the Irvine campus, with approximately 1,200 more to be added later in May. The new UCI collection is available, along with collections from UCB, UCSB, and UCSC, from the ARTstor home page under "Institutional Collections". ]]>By Maureen Burns, Humanities Curator, Visual Resources Collection

UC Shared Images in ARTstor continue to grow with the addition of over 600 images from the Irvine campus, with approximately 1,200 more to be added later in May. The new UCI collection is available, along with collections from UCB, UCSB, and UCSC, from the ARTstor home page (http://library.artstor.org) under "Institutional Collections”.

The UCI collection includes a range of academic subject areas, targeted for migration to ARTstor based upon content gaps, new areas of faculty interest, and donated images. The largest single area represented is Contemporary art, followed by Japanese art (historical and modern, with intriguing WWII material coming soon), Ancient Roman art and architecture, American art, Medieval manuscripts, and Italian Baroque painting. Images were selected for their instructional and scholarly value, with priority given to images specifically requested by faculty for teaching, research, and student study.;

UCI Usage of ARTstor

Recent ARTstor usage statistics indicate that UCI is one of the heaviest users of ARTstor hosted collections, having accessed almost 25,000 images since the academic year began. Individual images were accessed and used approximately 110,000 times as part of the year-long UCI Humanities Core Course, which comprises 1,100 undergraduates and 50 faculty members and teaching assistants — the high usage due in part to the adoption of ARTstor within the curriculum. ARTstor was used for an assignment on Weimar and Nazi Germany where the students researched, wrote, and created a Wikipedia-like document complete with images and citations. The director of the program, Professor Julia Lupton, enthused, “ARTstor has changed my life”. She is hoping it changes her students’ lives too.

Background

Through UC Shared Images, campuses are strategically combining instructional images with ARTstor’s vast range of licensed images, in order to build a robust teaching collection with efficiencies for users, contributors, and the UC system. See http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/image/ for extended information on how we are building shared image collections together.

The MSG provides image-based metadata specifications for campus visual resource centers and libraries participating in the UC Shared Images program, available through the ARTstor hosting platform. Through the program, campuses can collaboratively develop image collections and share them across the UC system — reducing redundant effort and costs, and providing a convenient and single point of access to the essential images faculty need for teaching.

Metadata that is consistent with other collection records across UC institutions as well as with other ARTstor collections will improve the integration and discoverability of records within ARTstor. The specifications are based on the ARTstor Core metadata scheme (and indirectly, the VRA Core schema), and also draws on the Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) data content standard.

The guidelines were prepared by the Shared Metadata Working Group (SMWG) from December 2008 through March 2009. A special thanks to all of the SMWG members for their time, effort, and expertise that went into preparing this document:

]]>New UC Shared Images Collections are Now Available via ARTstorhttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2008/10/03/new-uc-shared-images-collections-are-now-available-via-artstor/
Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:21:37 +0000http://cdlinfo.cdlib.org/blog/2008/10/03/new-uc-shared-images-collections-are-now-available-via-artstor/Select art and architecture images from UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara image collections are now available in ARTstor to all 9 ARTstor-participating UC campuses. These collections are listed on the ARTstor home page under Institutional Collections. ]]>By Jan Eklund, Curator of Visual Resources, History of Art Department, UCB and Jackie Spafford, Visual Resources Curator, UCSB

Select art and architecture images from UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara image collections are now available in ARTstor to all 9 ARTstor-participating UC campuses. These collections are listed on the ARTstor home page (http://library.artstor.org) under Institutional Collections.

UC Berkeley Visual Resources Collection

The UC Berkeley Visual Resources Collection is comprised of 33,747 images from the History of Art Visual Resources Collection and the College of Environmental Design Visual Resource Center. This collection, which contains images that span world art from the earliest cave paintings at Lascaux to contemporary art and architecture, complements the 1,000,000 images already in ARTstor. The UC Berkeley Visual Resources Collection is particularly strong in Roman architecture, wall painting, and mosaics from southern Italy, European Renaissance and Baroque architecture, painting and prints, Chinese painting, Indian art, and 20th century European and American art and architecture.

In addition, a UC Berkeley-only Instructional Collection has also been established for images that are licensed or otherwise restricted to the Berkeley campus.

UCSB Visual Resources Collection

The first installment to the UC Santa Barbara Visual Resources Collection is comprised of the following images:

19th century American art (primarily Homer and Eakins, including many studies and sketches, and photographs of their studios and students) [210 images]

Other miscellaneous materials (e.g. 18th century Italian souvenirs from the Grand Tour)

Apart from the Kaufmann House images all of the contributions to this online collection were digitized in-house, on the VRC’s digital copystand, and all were requests for recent and current courses.

Background

This new content is the result of the collective effort of CDL’s UC Image Service, the CDL Advisory Group known as the Shared Metadata Working Group (SMWG), and Image Curators from 9 UC campuses (a.k.a. “Sliders”). The SMWG developed a contributor’s roadmap called the Metadata Submission Guidelines (MSG) to help image managers format and map data from their local collection databases to the ARTstor Core elements.

The long-term objective of the UC Image Service is to create an online collection of images for teaching and learning comprised of content from 9 campus collections plus the licensed content managed by CDL. These collections add unique images to the core ARTstor collections and address the immediate teaching needs of faculty. Sharing locally created digital images systemwide will eliminate redundancy of effort, focus collection development attention on content unique to each campus, and reduce overall costs.

The UC Libraries Collection Development Committee (CDC) has appointed collection liaisons for UC Shared Images – one from each campus, to facilitate collection building in ARTstor. The liaisons will work directly with ARTstor on building hosted image collections, and they will be the primary contact for anyone interesting in hosting a collection in ARTstor on their campus. The liaisons will advise potential contributors on the characteristics of a desirable collection, the minimum submission standards, image quality standards, and other hosting requirements.

The liaisons will take the lead in forming collection development and management groups on their campuses. The purpose of the groups is to bring together campus stakeholders to discuss priorities and best options for developing and managing collections at each campus. Foremost, the groups would decide which local campus image collections may be loaded into ARTstor as institutional hosted collections.

CDL has created an email list for the collection liaisons group as a forum to discuss UC-wide shared collection development best practices.

The Collection Liaisons roster and the collection development program proposal are posted on the Image Service website under “Collection Development”.

Thirteen additional Luna Insight image collections were recently made available by CDL for the UC Image Service. These open-access collections are hosted by various institutions such as UC Merced, Cornell, Stanford and others, and are freely shared with the Insight community. To view the collections, open your Luna Insight client (see download instructions below) and select one or more collections. Alternatively, you may view one collection at a time using the Insight browser with the URLs (PIDs) below. Note: The Insight browser has limited functionality. To learn more about these collections, see the CDL Image Service, Luna Collections website at http://www.imageservice.cdlib.org.

Catena Historic Gardens & Landscapes (Bard)
1,710 historic and contemporary images, including plans, engravings, and photographs, covering garden history and landscape studies with a focus on Italian villas.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130816
URL: [http://bard.lunaimaging.com:8083/BrowserInsight/BrowserInsight?cmd=start&cid=BardBAR1NA&un=collectionshare&pw=share&iia=0&isl=0]
Note: The PID works in Firefox, but you must paste the URL directly into Internet Explorer.

Early American Images, John Carter Brown Library (Brown)
5,097 graphic representations of the colonial Americas, from Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego, drawn entirely from primary sources printed or created between 1492 and ca. 1825.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130818

Icelandic and Faroese Photographs (Cornell)
416 images depict Iceland and the Faeroe Islands on the edge of modernity at the end of the 19th century, including landscapes, farmsteads, towns and people.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130819

Lee Institute for Japanese Art (UC Merced)
1,201 images comprising Japanese screen and scroll paintings, sculptures, prints, ceramics, and lacquerwares from the 10th to the 21st centuries with particular emphasis on paintings of the Edo period (1600-1868).
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130845

Maps of Africa (Stanford)
578 images of antiquarian maps of Africa from the Stanford University Libraries, dating from the late 15th to early 20th century.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130820

Political Americana Collection (Cornell)
2,278 images of Presidential promotional and commemorative items dating from 1789 to 1980; elections from 1832 to 1960 are particularly well represented.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130821

Pratt Institute Ex Libris Collection
1,289 images of 19th- and 20th-century bookplates from private and institutional libraries feature finely detailed engraving or etching and serve as outstanding examples of period book art and typography.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130822

Pratt Institute Fashion Plate Collection
129 images of hand-colored fashion plates from 1922 created by such prominent French artists as George Barbier, Pierre Brissaud, and Georges Lepape, and anticipate the Art Deco movement of the mid-1920s.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130823

Walter Scott Collection (University of Edinburgh)
446 images including portraits of Scott and of people associated with Scott, art inspired by his novels and poems, illustrations to editions of his works, and pictures of places associated with Scott.
PID: http://uclibs.org/PID/130826

Luna Insight software version 5.6

To download the most recent version of the Luna Insight java client (version 5.6) for either Mac or PC, follow the instructions on the Image Service Insight Download web page: http://www.imageservice.cdlib.org/insight.html. Download the java client from this page rather than getting it directly from the Luna Imaging website; the CDL version has been bundled so users can open the client without being prompted for a username and password.

CDL has added the Saskia Art & Architecture collection to UC Shared Images in ARTstor. Saskia provides over 26,000 core art history images on Western European civilization from more than 100 museums worldwide including the Prado, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Uffizi, the Louvre, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York as well as archaeological sites in Greece, Italy, Turkey and Egypt. Saskia includes selected African, Asian, and Pre-Columbian art.

You will find the Saskia collection listed as UC Share: CDL Saskia Art & Architecture on the ARTstor home page under Institutional Collections. You may search Saskia along with the more than 750,000 images in the ARTstor digital library by simply doing a keyword search in ARTstor. By default, ARTstor searches include all collections. To limit a search to the Saskia collection only, you may select the collection name from the search menu on the ARTstor home page or advanced search page.

In 2003, the California Digital Library purchased the Saskia Archive to make these images available for educational and research use to all University of California campuses. Users may download screen size jpeg files from ARTstor for use in PowerPoint or Keynote. In addition, full size images are available for downloading to ARTstor’s Offline Image Viewer (OIV) presentation software.

To learn more about UC Shared Images and ARTstor, see the CDL Image Service website: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/image or contact Lena Zentall, Image Service Manager (lena.zentall@ucop.edu, 510.987.9233).

UC Shared Images implementation continues with CDL moving some collections from Luna Insight to ARTstor, while access to other collections is reverting to UC websites.

What do you need to do?
Since PIDs (persistent identifiers) stay the same even when URLs change, you will not need to make any changes to links for collections with PIDs — provided you are using the PID. (The UC Shared Cataloging Program manages PIDs.) You may need to update descriptive information in your local catalogs and websites as some collection hosts have changed.

CDL licensed image collections

Saskia and Hartill will be available in Luna Insight until June 15, 2008, after which they will only be available in ARTstor.

What does this mean for users?
Users will be able to easily search across these two CDL collections along with more than 750,000 images in the ARTstor digital library.

Other Insight collections moving in June 2008

AMICA
Art Museum Images from Cartography Associates (AMICA) will be available in Insight until June 30, 2008 when the license expires. (See CDLInfo, March 6, 2008.)

Access to these collections in Insight will end on June 15, 2008:
LUCI
UC Riverside will continue to provide access to this collection on the LUCI website. Some contributors to this collection will be moving their LUCI images to their UC Shared Images collections hosted on ARTstor beginning in Fall 2008.
LUCI website: http://vrc.ucr.edu/luci/index.html

SPIRO
SPIRO is UC Berkeley’s online image database from the College of Environmental Design Visual Resources Center. The Visual Resources Center is in the process of merging select images from SPIRO into the UC Shared Images’ UC Berkeley Art and Architecture collection to be hosted by ARTstor. UC Berkeley is working with ARTstor to make this collection available in September 2008. In addition, UC Berkeley will continue to make the SPIRO website available.
SPIRO website: http://www.mip.berkeley.edu/spiro

UCSF Demonstration Project
This set of 99 dental and medical images from UCSF will no longer be available after June 15, 2008.

What does this mean for users?
Alternative access is available for nearly all these collections. Many of these collections were built in Insight during the Image Demonstrator project to get experience with delivering image services and merging collections. Most of these collections have primary sites outside of Insight that have been growing and improving while these “demonstrator” collections in Insight remained static.

Insight collections available after June 2008
More than 30,000 images are available in these collections provided to Insight clients. New collections will be made available periodically in accordance with the JSCSC process for adding open-access resources.